Mashele great to read but sometimes gets it wrong

I enjoy reading Prince Mashele’s Monday column in the Sowetan as it is intellectually stimulating. However, I want to take him up on two issues.

He tends to embellish his articles by misrepresenting the facts of a good story. A few weeks ago he attributed a good quotation to a wrong person. It goes like this: “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he”. These words were not crafted by Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was King Solomon, the son of David, who uttered the words. (Proverbs 29:18 KJV).

Secondly, when commenting on the EFF’s policy on land expropriation, Mashele said: “Jan Smuts was right to assert that a whole is greater than the sum total of its parts.”

Again, Smuts may well have uttered these words, but the originator was Max Wertheimer, the founder of gestalt psychology. Otherwise carry on, Mbatini. We love your column.

Jimmy Khoza, Wilropark